Spain opens this Monday a section of the rail link between Cáceres and the border with Portugal, in Badajozdespite the critical voices that point out that the connection does not have the characteristics to be called high speed.
The inaugural trip has the presence of the King of SpainPhilip VIof the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchezand the leader of the Regional Board of Spanish Extremadura, William Fernandez Varawho will travel from Cáceres to Badajoz, where the institutional act will take place.
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this section forms part of the future Madrid-Lisbon linkof which, at the moment, only the section between Plasencia and Badajoz, in Extremadura, will be operational.
The rail link between Plasencia and Madrid will continue to be carried out on a conventional, non-electrified, single-lane line (which does not allow trains to cross outside a station, where one of them must be stopped).
Even so, the train journey between the Portuguese border, in Badajoz, and the Spanish capital, Madrid, will have 51 minutes less.
According to the test trip carried out on June 23 on the new section (between Plasencia and Badajoz), the train it will take two hours and 15 minuteswith two stops (Mérida and Cáceres).
This test trip was attended by the Spanish Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, and a protest by the population upon leaving Plasencia.
The “fast train” that will circulate this Monday it’s not a high speed train Y to Madrid, as promised more than 20 years ago by the Spanish authorities.
The promise was repeated by the different governments, without materializing, until, in 2012, it was replaced by the promise of a “fast train”, which only this year will it materialize and only in one section.
The high speed train on this line negotiated with Portugalwith the two countries announcing the connection between Madrid and Lisbon, through Badajoz, at a summit in 2002 between the two governments, then headed by Durão Barroso and José Maria Aznar.
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For those who participated in the test trip in Plasencia, the connection is “I only smoke and not the decent train that Extremadura needs”the Spanish autonomous community that borders the Alentejo.
Among the words of protest, cited by the EFE agency, were expressions such as “blindly”.
Speaking in Badajoz, Raquel Sánchez recognized that The situation of the trains in Extremadurawith more than a million inhabitantsThis “an injustice”with sections where the maximum possible speed is 50 kilometers per hour Y many incidents daily.
You have to apologize”, he said, saying that all governments have been responsible for Extremadura having one of the worst rail connections in Spain.
Poor rail connections in the region led 40,000 people from Extremadura to Madrid in November 2017 to demonstrate in the center of the capital, demanding “worthy trains”.
One of the trains suppressed in this region was the Lusitânia, in 2011, between Lisbon and Madrid, which crossed the Portuguese border from Caia and entered Spain through Badajoz.
Source: Observadora
